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Remembering the news: Modeling retention data from a study with 14,000 participants

Journal

Memory & Cognition

Volume | Issue number

33 | 5

Pages (from-to)

793-810

Document type

Article

Faculty

Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FMG)

Institute

Psychology Research Institute (PsyRes)

Abstract

A retention study is presented in which participants answered questions about news events, with a retention interval that
varied within participants between 1 day and 2 years. The study involved more than 14,000 participants and around 500,000
data points. The data were analyzed separately for participants who answered questions in Dutch or in English, providing an
opportunity for replication. We fitted models of varying complexity to the data in order to test several hypotheses concerning
retention. Evidence for an asymptote in retention was found in only one data set, and participants with greater media exposure
displayed a higher degree of learning but no difference in forgetting. Thus, forgetting was independent of initial learning.
Older adults were found to have forgetting curves similar to those of younger adults.

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